had a long -- he's seen -- he's seen the united states senate and the presidency for a number of years. he's seen many relationships between presidents and leaders of the opposite party. he knows how this place works. my sense of the republican leader and of the large majority of us is that we would like to see a result. we'd like to see a result on this very tough issue of saving social security, saving medicare, saving medicaid, saving these programs that seniors depend on, and i wonder if the republican leader would agree with me that despite the fact that we engage every day in political matters, that we have big differences of opinions, that on this issue, without presidential leadership, we can't get a result and that there are a lot of us on both sides of the aisle who are ready to work with the president to fix the debt. mr. mcconnell: well, i tell you, my friend from tennessee, in many ways, it's a statement of the obvious but a lot of people forget it. there is only one person in america out of 307 million americans who can sign something into law. and only one person in amer